Perspectives in Psych
A psychologist working from this perspective might attribute a child's behavior to the influence of family, community, and the culture in which they've been raised.
What is the sociocultural perspective?
Researchers use this descriptive tool—often consisting of questionnaires or Likert scales—to quickly collect self-reported attitudes and opinions from a large sample of people.
What is a survey?
In an experiment studying how time spent on social media may cause depressive tendencies, this would be the independent variable.
What is time spent on social media?
Daily Double!
This administrative body evaluates research designs to ensure human participants are protected and that studies meet all ethical requirements before data collection can begin.
If a test score distribution has a positive skew due to a floor effect, this specific measure of central tendency gets pulled furthest toward the tail on the right.
What is the mean?
A psychologist working from this perspective might seek to measure the heart rate, body chemistry, or neural activity in the brain to understand a person's behavior.
What is the biological perspective?
In this descriptive research method, the researcher or observer could have 'observer bias,' or a particular opinion of what they expect to see as they observe people's behaviors in their ordinary day-to-day settings.
What is naturalistic observation?
In an experiment, this group is exposed to the independent variable.
What is the experimental group?
To comply with ethical guidelines, any study involving this practice must include a full debriefing session for participants once the experiment is completed.
What is deception?
In a normal distribution (normal curve) of SAT scores, the middle 68% of test-takers scored this many standard deviations from the mean.
What is 1 standard deviation from the mean?
A psychologist who studies thought patterns, memory, intelligence, problem-solving, and creativity is working primarily from this perspective.
What is the cognitive perspective?
Freud used this method of detailed study of one or a few individuals which he used as the basis for his psychoanalytic theories.
What is the case study method?
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Participants in an experiment must be divided between the control group and experimental group using this method, to reduce the influence of confounding variables on the outcome.
Because minors cannot give legally binding informed consent, researchers must obtain parental permission alongside this affirmative agreement directly from the child.
What is assent?
While descriptive statistics summarize and characterize data, this category of statistics is used to make generalizations and determine if findings apply to the broader population.
What are inferential statistics?
Sigmund Freud sought to study the unconscious wishes and desires that influence our conscious behaviors, and in doing so invented this psychological approach.
What is the psychoanalytic/psychodynamic perspective.
Surveys can gather data from many people in a population, but researchers seek this kind of sample to take the survey, so that the survey results will represent the entire population.
What is a representative sample?
When neither the experiment participants nor the researchers know which group (control or experimental) the participants are in.
What is a double-blind (or double-mask) study?
This mandatory post-experiment procedure requires researchers to explain the true purpose of the study and clear up any misconceptions held by participants.
What is debriefing?
Researchers are seeking experimental results which are _____ _____, meaning that the probability is less than 5% (p < .05) that the outcome was due to chance, and making it over 95% probable that the independent variable in the experiment caused the result.
What is statistically significant?
Psychologists who explain behavior from this perspective often focus on how natural selection and 'survival' instincts have caused humans to develop certain common characteristics.
What is the evolutionary perspective?
This kind of study finds statistical patterns and relationships between variables, but does NOT establish causation.
What is a correlational study?
A variable other than the independent variable which might be affecting the results of the experiment.
What is confounding variable?
Research achieves this strict condition only when no one—not even the lead experimenter—can match a set of collected data to the specific individual who provided it.
What is anonymity?
While p-values show whether an effect exists, this key measurement—often expressed as Cohen’s $d$—indicates the practical strength or magnitude of the difference between group means.
What is effect size?